neighbourhood. This Morley knew; yet such is the force of that happy liberality of principle inculcated among the better born of the land, when in statu pupillari at those great fountains of learning, our public schools, that he never allowed it for a moment to engender a thought, that such a trifling accident could in any way operate upon Clavering's friendship for him. He therefore could not make up his mind to suspect his cousin's integrity of feel ing towards himself; and, in spite of the stranger's warning, treated him, as he had ever done, with confidence and regard. though not indeed without a very narrow escape, honourably acquitted. Clavering was found guilty and executed. For a considerable period after this tragical event, the warning and prediction of the stranger were constantly recurring, with the most painful intensity, to Morley's mind. He had been warned by that extraordinary man to beware of Clavering, and by neglecting the warning his life had been placed in jeopardy. He remembered the prediction which limited his life to his thirtyfourth birth-day. He was now scarcely three-and-twenty, but eleven years seemed so short a term to one who had a strong desire of life, that he became melancholy as he looked forward to its terminating so speedily. In spite of himself he could not bring his mind to feel, though he could easily bring his reason to admit, the absurdity of a prediction of which no human creature could have a divine assurance, because such divine communications have long since ceased to be made; and he seemed to grow daily more and more convinced that the hour of his death was written in the lines of his palm, and had been read by the mysterious stranger. He knew the idea was weak-that it was superstitious, but he could not controul it. It was a sort of mental calenture, presenting to his mind what his reason readily detected to be a figment, but which his morbid apprehensions substantiated into a reality. He became so extremely depressed, that his mother, his now only surviving parent, began to be exceedingly alarmed. Seeing her anxiety, he fully stated to her the cause of his unusual depression. She argued with him upon the folly, nay, the criminality of giving way to an apprehension which, in the very nature of things, must be perfectly groundless; since even the sacred scriptures represent the hour of death as a matter hidden amongst the mysteries of Providence, and therefore beyond the penetration of man. The caution which the stranger had given him to beware of Clavering afforded no proof of extraordinary penetration, since one who had shown himself to be so wantonly profligate in youth, as Clavering had done, was a very fit object of warning; and surely it could be no evidence of supernatural endowment, or the gift of more than ordinary foresight, to bid a person beware of a bad man. These representations were not without their effect; yet Four years soon passed, and the friendship of the cousins had not abated. Clavering had passed through his academic ordeal, and taken his degree, though his character at college had been anything but unblemished. He had acquired some equivocal propensities, and had been suspected of some very questionable acts, which had nearly been the cause of his expulsion from the university. This was not unknown to Morley; and occasionally the warning of the stranger shot like a scathing flash across his memory, leav ing a momentary pang at his heart; but that regard which had been nurtured in infancy and matured in manhood, was too deeply rooted within him to be staggered by what might after all be nothing more than a whimsical caution the mere chance ebullition of madness. Shortly, however, after Clavering quitted the university, he associated him self with a set of men whose characters were at the best doubtful, and Morley was earnestly advised to break off all intercourse with a man, who was evidently declining every day in the good opinion of all who knew him. Morley, however, could not make up his mind to relinquish the society of his kinsman, for whom he had so long felt a very sincere attachment, because some few rumoured deviations from strict propriety of conduct were laid to his charge, but which had not been substantiated even by the shadow of a proof. His eyes, however, were unexpectedly opened to the baseness of his kinsman's character. To Morley's consternation, Clavering was suddenly taken up on a charge of forgery to a very considerable amount, and upon his examination he had the atrocious audacity to implicate his relative, who was in consequence apprehended as an accomplice, put upon his trial, but, as the clouds of despondency dispersed but tardily, his mother persuaded him to go abroad with some sprightly friends, hoping that change of scene might restore his mind to its wonted repose. Nor was she deceived; after an absence of three years he returned quite an altered man. The impression left by the prophecy of the stranger seemed to have entirely passed from his memory. He had formed new friendships, marked out new prospects, and appeared to look forward without any withering apprehensions of evil. His mother was delighted to observe the change, though even she, as he advanced towards his thirty-fourth birthday, could not help entertaining certain misgivings, when she thought upon that melancholy prediction, which had so long cast a shadow across the course of her son's peace. Year after year, however, rolled on without any event happening to interrupt the uniformity of a very unchequered life, until Morley entered upon the thirty-fourth year of his age. The impression originally left by the stranger's prediction had been entirely effaced, and as he never mentioned the circumstance, his mother justly surmised that he had forgotten it altogether. She had not, however. She watched the days, weeks, and months roll on, with the most painful anxiety; not that she believed the stranger's prophecy was about to be accomplished, but because she longed to be assured of its fallacy. Anxiety and belief clashed, and the latter was shaken by the perpetual collision. The possibility of its fulfilment was ever present to her mind, and this possibility, however apparently remote at first, was brought nearer and nearer every time it recurred to her thoughts, until at length it appeared before her with all the vividness and amplitude of reality. The death of her only son was an idea continually presented to her waking thoughts, as well as to her slumbering faculties; so that however strongly her reason might argue against its probability, still the phantoms of thought would arise without any formal evocation, and they addressed themselves more potently to the mind's eye, than the wiser suggestions of reason to the understanding. So manifest was Morley's emancipation from the fetters of that moody apprehension which had formerly enslaved his mind, that not only was his spirit buoyant, and his peace undisturbed, but he evidently looked forward to happiness in time as well as in eternity, since he had pai his successful addresses to a very beautiful girl, and the period was appointed for their union. It was fixed for the day after the lady should attain her one-and-twentieth year, which would carry Morley nearly to his thirty-fifth; so that it was clear he anticipated no intervening evil; on the contrary, he talked of the consummation of his happiness with a fluency and earnestness, which clearly showed that he fully expected to see it realised. His mother was much pleased to observe that he no longer clung to those old recollections, which she even now feared to revive, and to which she could not herself revert without a strong but indefinite apprehension of danger. To be concluded in our next. JOHNNY FRY. SKETCH OF A REAL CHARACTER. FOR THE OLIO. and good-natured; the suspicious and He was a compound of the simple irritable; the gentleman and the dupe. His father dying when Johnny was a young man, and leaving him a decent his own ground and formed his own competency, he entered the world on character. He soon felt a penchant for taste this decided his own peculiar acquiring a superiority over his kind but uneducated neighbours, and became (as he thought) a cinder-heated Geoffry Wildgoose, the spiritual convert to the loquacious harangues of Quixote, and trudged like a true enthusiast through the limb-tiring wolds of Gloucestershire and over the chalky hills of Wilts, considering himself as by predetermination to open communia 'new light' sprung up and destined cations with perishing creatures,' and establish his opinions in their minds to their inestimable good. Much to his mortification, however, his labours and all his time. To counteract this were vain, he lost much of his money misled propensity, and save him from mental aberration, a friend took him by the hand and became treasurer to the modicum left, which, unfortunately for him, was inadequate, as Fry had a most unconscionable and ungovernable appetite. He was not a glutton only, but a temporal thirster after the liquids of the bottle and barrel, and would devour more at a table in both characters than any other man in the county. His fellow, indeed, was not known in the memory of his cotemporaries for 'home consumption.' Surely his throat was candles-mutton-peas; or galls of Alas!-alas ! Johnny Fry! now, thou, thyself art food, and thy better nature is rewarded in county chronicles. Now, thy gambols are ended, and no successor is shining in the starry magnitude of thy career, a tear will rise to the eye in thought of all thy winning ways,' and none survive thee who do not regret thou art not here to prefer quantity to quality, and devour, like Handell, at one fell swoop,' the ordinary portion of three men. J. Z. HORRORS OF SLAVERY IN tinned, and his stomach coppered. Yet, he was a persuadable being; and his friends who often made him their butt, while he fast emptied theirs, and gave him their tricks, while be lightened their larders, enjoyed the spirit of his credulity, by passing jokes current with him. Such, for example, as getting him in the equinox of a summer's day to tread down a haystack, puffing and blowing with a heavy beam on his shoulder, rewarding him, by making him a pie in a milk platter of large dimensions, composed of all kinds of vegetables, spices, meats, and liquids. This dainty pie, fit to set before a king, was put under his bed, that he might eat, drink, and be merry,' at his leisure. Another mode of generous kindness was imposed on him, by inducing So far as respects the slaves, they him to carry a grindstone in the low- are even still in a worse situation; for belling season, under pretence of whet- though their evidence is in no case adting the clappers, through the tangled missible against the whites, the affirmawoods, to the spoliation of his clocked tion of free persons of colour, or their silk hose, and the expedient reduction fellow-slaves, is received against them. of his corpulent inclining planed sys- I was placed in a situation at Charlestem; but on his return, he never failed to ton which gave me too frequent opporfill his hamper with the sagacious grind- tunities to witness the effects of slavery ers in his head, which were of the butter in its most aggravated state. Mrs. tooth and parkpale description. To Street treated all the servants in the such schemes was Johnny Fry a party, house in the most barbarous manner; and profitably happy in their execu- and this, although she knew that Stewtion. His cool philosophy tended to art, the hotel-keeper here, had lately excite the most charitable humanities nearly lost his life by maltreating a in his favour, and he gained friends slave. He beat his cook, who was a and food at their will. In a higher stout fellow, until he could no longer point of consequence, he thought him- support it. He rose upon his master, self born a preacher. He essayed and in his turn gave him such a beatmuch to gratify this idea; but either ing that it had nearly cost him his life; nature, memory, or education, forsook the cook immediately left the house, him, and he sunk into the bathos of the ran off, and was never afterwards ridiculous when he attempted to soar heard of,-it was supposed that he had higher than common actions, and strove drowned himself. Not a day, however, to advance qualities which he could passed without my hearing of Mrs. not command. He was proud, how- Street whipping and ill-using her unever, of being considered somebody, fortunate slaves. On one occasion, whether a canon or bishop, in the de- when one of the female slaves had disgrees of methodism, and made no little obliged her, she beat her until her own stir when he personated Martin Lu- strength was exhausted, and then inther, or John Calvin. sisted on the bar-keeper, Mr. Ferguson, proceeding to inflict the remainder of the punishment-Mrs. Street in the mean-time took his place in the barroom. She instructed him to lay on the whip severely in an adjoining room. His nature was repugnant to the execution of the duty which was imposed on him. He gave a wink to the girl, who understood it, and bellowed lustily, while he made the whip crack on the walls of the room. Mrs. Street expressed herself quite satisfied with the way in which Ferguson had executed her instructions; but, unfortunately But it would be impossible to unite half the 'good things' of which Johnny Fry was the promoter in himself and others. He weathered the storm through good and ill report to a late age; and his benefactor, in whose hands his little treasure had been deposited, was of too benevolent a nature not to exceed the supply for his ample use. His clay required moisture. His stomach, like an air balloon, expanded to a volition of gustative capacity; but, through which, like to the lock of a canal all passed glibly, lbs. of for him, his lenity to the girl became known in the house, and the subject of merriment, and was one of the reasons for his dismissal before I left the house; -but I did not know of the most atrocious of all the proceedings of this cruel woman until the very day that I quitted the house. I had put up my clothes in my portmanteau, when I was about to set out, but finding it was rather too full, I had difficulty in getting it closed to allow me to lock it; I therefore told one of the boys to send me one of the stoutest of the men to assist me. A great robust feltow soon afterwards appeared, whom I found to be the cook, with tears in his eyes ;-I asked him what was the matter? He told me that, just at the time when the boy called for him, he had got so sharp a blow on the cheek bone, from the devil in petticoats as had unmanned him for the moment. Upon my expressing commiseration for him, he said he viewed this as nothing, but that he was leading a life of terrible suffering; that about two years had elapsed, since he and his wife, with his two children, had been exposed in the public market at Charleston for sale, that he had been purchased by Mrs. Street, that his wife and children had been purchased by a different person; and that, though he was living in the same town with them, he never was allowed to see them;-he would be beaten within an ace of his life if he ventured to go to the corner of the street. Wherever the least symptom of rebellion or insubordination appears at Charleston on the part of a slave, the master sends the slave to the gaol, where he is whipped or beaten as the master desires. The Duke of Saxe Weimar, who was at New Orleans in 1826, and who lodged in the boarding-house of the well-known Madame Herries, one of the best boarding-houses at New Orleans, has given a detailed account of the savage conduct of this lady to one of her slaves, which I transcribe in his own words :-One particular scene, which roused my indignation in the highest manner on the 22d March, I cannot suffer to pass in silence. There was a young Virginian female slave in our boarding-house, employed as a chamber-maid, a cleanly, attentive, and very regular individual. A Frenchman residing in the house called in the morning early for water to wash. As the water was not instantly brought to him, he went down the steps and encountered the poor girl, who just then had some other occupation in hand. He struck her immediately with his fist in the face, so that the blood ran from her forehead. The poor creature, roused by this unmerited abuse, put herself on her defence, and caught the Frenchman by the throat. He screamed for help, but no one would interfere. The fellow then ran to his room, gathered his things together, and was about to leave the house. But when our landlady, Madame Herries heard of this, she disgraced herself by having twenty-six lashes inflicted upon the poor girl with a cow-hide, and refined upon her cruelty so much, that she forced the sweetheart of the girl, a young negro slave, to count off the lashes upon her. This Frenchman, a merchant's clerk from Montpelier, was not satisfied with this: He went to the police; lodged a complaint against the girl; had her arrested by two constables; and whipped again in his presence. I regret that I did not take a note of this miscreant's name, in order that I might give his disgraceful conduct its merited publicity." Stuart's Three Years in North America. Intimations of New Books. Vegetable Cookery. By a Lady. In utter condemnation of ardent spirits and the grosser qualities of animal food, the author advocates combinations of vegetables with ability; and gives instructions for the making pancakes, omelettes, and almost every delicacy which can be brought on the table for the healthy and invalid, at a reasonable price. History of the American Theatre. Theatres have increased in proportion to the progress of cultivated knowledge. America is not without writers and actors; ergo, a history of the Stage, as it has been, and as it is, is a desideratum in the circle of our Atlantic brethren. Arriving across the channel to us, it comes not in a 'questionable shape,' but conveys to our view an idea how the dramatic sphere is conducted. As our readers will expect, a great deal of confab is detailed respecting English performers that make their voices go forth into all lands,' and reach the very corners of the earth ;* and, as they are foremost in this 'History of the Theatre,' so will the work amuse and instruct those who will be at the trouble of perusing it. * Vide page 394, Matthews and Cooke. Ten Minutes Advice on Coughs and Colds. If by the attending to this advice, but for ten minutes, will point out a remedy, or even alleviate the common attacks to which our countrymen and fair sex are exposed, surely none of the conductors of families will neglect reading this book, which is cheap and valuable. Dramatic Library, with Remarks Critical and Biographical. By George Daniel. These remarks are neither strictly critical nor biographical; nor are they of the least interest, or utility, to the readers of the Dramatic Library. Walks through London, or a Picture of the British Metropolis, &c. By G. A. Cooke, Esq. Just such a personal acquaintance as a resident or visiter would seek in his obambulatory warfare through the metropolis, and a delightful companion to any one, wishing to be informed by accurate reference. a slight peep-none should pass by the more solid and higher works of art unnoticed. We, therefore, call the attention of our readers, who, we feel assured, are of a more intellectual class than the vulgo, commonalty-exhibition visiters, and invite them to the Diorama of Paris and Pisa, two performances most delightfully executed, and superior in every respect to any of the works which have preceded. The two poetical effusions given below will partly describe the workings of the mind of the artist; but nothing in language, short of a view, can delineate the contemplative effect of Campo Santo, or derive comprehension of the extensive unity, comprised from Montmartre.' Campo Santo, and a View of Paris from Montmartre. CAMPO SANTO. Down the right line, a monumental shade But faintly shows the annals of the dead. In golden beauty, pure and brightly cast, shine, How beautiful!-Illustrious!-how divine! PAINTED BY MR. DAGUERRE. Waylett, having sung this ballad in VIEW OF PARIS—FROM MONTMARTRE. her best style, is a sufficient passport for its popularity with those who can lull the senses, and shed a charm of hope over the sphere of mundane existence. The Melodion.-No. 1. This is a new musical periodical, started with laudable intentions and talented withal. We trust, therefore, that this number will be found worthy of patronage, by the adepts, amateurs, and tyros in harmonic science, and induce the proprietors to go on and prosper,' con amore. Fine Arts. DIORAMA, REGENT'S PARK. THE metropolis is never void of atfraction; but while the last novelty draws the more superficial observers to Drawn from the hallowed fragments of the great, And Pisa's history of departed state, land. Montmartre bears its windmills to the right, The sails' are resting for the South's mild Yielding eternal structure and delight: breath, death! Within, though life prevails, all's still as The shrubs and verdures,buildings, pathways, spires, Attract the eye and propagate desires; Though human forms' are not revealedwhat power In this great city, to this very hour, But distant mist, in slothful ease remains. |